VI
At the funeral he submitted to the amazed scrutiny of the country people. They couldn't hurt him, because they impinged not at all on his world; but he was relieved when the oblong box had been consigned to the place reserved for it, and he could, after arranging the last details of his mother's departure, take the train back to New York.
Blodgett didn't even bother to ask where he had been. He was content these days to let George go his own way. He hadn't forgotten that the younger man had seen farther off than he the greatest opportunity for money making the world had ever offered the greedy. He personally was more interested in the syndicating of foreign external loans. The Planters weren't far from the head of that movement, and George rather resented his stout employer's working hand in hand with the Planters. George longed to ask him how often he was trying to appear graceful at Oakmont these days.
The firm of Morton, Planter, and Goodhue had grown so rapidly that it took practically all of George's and Lambert's time. Mundy, to whom George had given a small interest, asked Blodgett if he couldn't leave to devote himself entirely to the offices upstairs.
"Go to it," Blodgett agreed, good naturedly. "Draw your profits and your salary from Morton after this."
George mulled over the sacrifice. Did it mean that Blodgett was so close to the Planters that a merger was possible?
"There's no use," he told Blodgett. "I'm earning practically nothing in your office, because I'm never here. I want to resign."
"Run along, sonny," Blodgett said. "Your salary is a small portion of the profits your infant firm is bringing me. I like you around the office once a day. Old Planter hasn't fired his boy, has he, and he's upstairs all the time, and he's taken over some of the old man's best clerks."
"He's Mr. Planter's son," George reminded him.
"And ain't you like a good son to me," the other leered, "making money for papa Blodgett?"
"Why did you let Mundy go so peacefully?" George asked, suspiciously.
"Because," Blodgett said, "he's been here a good many years, and he can make more money this way. Didn't want to stand in his light, and I had somebody in view."
But George wouldn't credit Blodgett with such altruism. Why was the man so infernally good natured, exuding an oily content? Goodhue hinted at a reason one day when they were talking of Sinclair and his lack of interest in the office.
"I've heard rather privately," Goodhue said, "that Sinclair got pretty badly involved a few months ago. If it hadn't been for Blodgett he'd have gone on the rocks a total wreck. Josiah puffed up and towed him away whole. Naturally Sinclair and his lady are grateful. I daresay this winter Blodgett's receiving invitations he's coveted, and if he gives any parties himself he'll have some of the people he's always wanted."
George hid his disapproval. Blodgett didn't even have a veneer. Money was all he could offer. And was Sinclair a great fool, or Blodgett the cleverest man in Wall Street, that Sinclair didn't know who had involved him and why?
As a matter of fact, Blodgett did appear at several dances, wobbling about the room to the discomfort of slender young things, getting generally in everyone's way. George hated to see him attempting to dance with Sylvia Planter. Sylvia seemed rather less successful in avoiding him than she did in keeping out of George's way. Until Blodgett's extraordinary week-end in February, indeed, George didn't have another chance to speak to her alone.
"Of course you'll come, George," Blodgett said. "If this weather holds there'll be skating and sleighing—horses always, if you want 'em; and a lot of first-class people."
"Who?" George asked.
"How about another financial chick—one of your partners?"
"Lambert Planter?"
The puffy face expanded.
"And the Sinclairs, because I'm a bachelor, and——"
But, since he could guess Sylvia would be there, George didn't care for any more names. He wondered why Lambert or his sister should go. Had her attitude toward the fat, coarse man conceivably altered because of his gambolling at Oakmont? While he talked business with Mundy, Lambert, and Goodhue, George's mind was distracted by a sense of imponderable loss. Was it the shadow of what Sylvia had lost by accepting such an invitation?
He didn't go until Saturday afternoon—there was too much to occupy him at the office. This making money out of Europe's need had a good deal constricted his social wanderings. It was why he hadn't frequently seen Dalrymple close enough for annoyance; why he had met Betty only briefly a very few times. He hadn't expected to run into either of them at Blodgett's, but both were there. Betty was probably Lambert's excuse for rushing out the night before.
George felt sorry for Mrs. Sinclair. Still against the corpulent crudities of her host she could weigh the graces of his guests. It pleased George that her greeting for him should be so warm.
The weather, too, had been considerate of Blodgett, refraining from injuring his snow or ice. A musical and brassy sleigh met George at the station. Patches of frosty white softened the lines of the house and draped the self-conscious nudity of the sculpture in the sunken garden.
"And it'll snow again to-night, sir," the driver promised, as if even the stables pulled for the master's success.
Everyone was out, but it was still early, so George asked for a horse and hurried into his riding clothes. He had been working rather too hard recently. The horse a groom brought around was a good one, and by no means overworked. George was as eager as the animal to limber up and go. Off they dashed at last along a winding bridle-path, broken just enough to give good footing. The war, and his share of helping the allies—at a price; his uncomfortable fear that the Baillys didn't like him to draw success from such a disaster; his disapproval of Sylvia's coming here—all cleared from his head as he galloped or trotted through the sharp air.
One thing: Blodgett hadn't spoiled these woodland bridle-paths; yet George had a sensation of always looking ahead for a nude marble figure at a corner, or an urn elaborately designed for simple flowers, or some iron animals to remind a hunter that Blodgett knew what a well-bred forest was for. Instead he saw through the trees ice swept clear of snow across which figures glided with joyful sounds.
"Some of his flashy guests," George thought.
He rode slowly to the margin of the pond, which shared the colour of the sky. Several of the skaters cried greetings. He recognized Dalrymple then, skating with a girl. Dalrymple veered away, waving a careless hand, Lambert came on, fingers locked with Betty's, and scraped to a halt at the pond's edge.
"So the war's stopped for the week-end at last?" Lambert called.
"I wondered if you'd come at all," Betty cried.
George dismounted, smothering his surprise.
"A men and youths' general furnisher," he said, "has to stick pretty much to the store. I never dreamed of seeing you here, Betty."
Perhaps Lambert caught George's real meaning.
"She's staying with Sylvia," he explained, "so, of course, she came."
George mounted and rode on, his mood suddenly as sunless as the declining afternoon. Those two still got along well enough. Certainly it was time for a rumour to take shape there. He had a sharp appreciation of having once been younger. Suppose, because of his ambition, he should see all his friends mate, leaving him as rich as Blodgett, and, like him, unpaired? He quickened the pace of his horse. It was inconceivable. No matter what Sylvia did he would never slacken his pursuit. In every other direction he had forged ahead. Eventually he would in that one. Then why did it hurt him to picture Betty gone beyond his reach?
He crossed the Blodgett boundaries, and entered a country road as undisturbed and enticing as the private bridle-paths had been. He took crossroads at random, keeping only a sense of direction, trying to understand why he was sorry he had to be with Betty when he had come only to be near Sylvia.
The thickening dusk warned him, and he chose a road leading toward Blodgett's. First he received the horseman's sense of something ahead of him. Then he heard the muffled tread of horses in the snow, and occasionally a laugh.
"More of Josiah's notables," he hazarded.
He put spurs to his horse, and in a few minutes saw against the snow three dark figures ambling along at an easy trot. When he had come closer he knew that two of the riders were men, the other a woman. It was easy enough to identify Blodgett. A barrel might have ridden so if it had had legs with which to balance itself; and that slender figure was probably the trapped Sinclair. George hurried on, his premonition assuming ugly lines of reality. Even at that distance and from the rear he guessed that the graceful woman riding between the two men was Sylvia. Why had she chosen an outing with the ridiculous Blodgett? Sinclair, no man possessed sufficient charm to offset the disadvantages of such a companionship.
George, when he was sure, reined in, surprised at his reflections. Blodgett, heaven knew, had been good to him, and he had once liked the man. Why, then, had he turned so viciously against him? Adjectives his mind had recently applied to Blodgett flashed back: "Coarse," "fat," "ridiculous." Was it just? Why did he do it in spite of himself?
Sinclair turned and saw him. The party reined in, Sylvia, as one would have expected, impatiently in advance of the others. Her nod and something she said were lost in the men's cheery greetings. Since she was in advance, and edging on, as if to get farther away from him, George's opportunity was plain. The road wasn't wide enough for four abreast. If he could move forward with her Blodgett and Sinclair would have to ride together.
"Since I'm the last," he interrupted them, "mayn't I have first place?"
Quite as a matter of course he put his horse through and reined in at her side. They started forward.
"You ride as well as ever," he commented.
She shot a glance at him. Calmly he studied the striking details of her face. Each time he saw her she seemed more desirable. How was he to touch those lips that had filled his boy's heart with bursting thoughts? For the first time since that day they rode together, only now he was at her side, instead of heeling like a trained dog. In his man's fashion he was as well clothed as she. When they got back he would enter the great house with her instead of going to the stables. Whether she cared to acknowledge it or not he was of her kind—more so than the millionaire Blodgett ever could be. So he absorbed her beauty which fired his imagination. Such a repetition seemed ominous of a second climax in their relations.
Her quick glance, however, disclosed only resentment for his intrusion. He excused it.
"You see, I couldn't very well ride behind you."
She turned away.
"Hurry a little," Blodgett called.
It was what George wished, as she wished to crawl, never far in advance of the others.
"Come," he said, and flecked her horse with his crop.
"Don't do that again!"
He had gathered his own horse, and was galloping. Hers insisted on following. When George pulled in to keep at her side they were well in advance of the others. Now that he was alone with her he found it difficult to speak, and evidently she would limit his opportunity, for as he drew in she spurred her horse. He caught her, laughing.
"You may as well understand that I'll never ride behind you again."
She pressed her provocative lips together. So in silence, except for the crunching and scattering of the snow, they tore on through the dusk, rounding curves between hedges, rising to heights above bare, white stretches of landscape, dipping into hollows already won by the night. And each moment they came nearer the house.
In the night of the hollows he battled his desire to reach over and touch her, and cry out:
"Sylvia! You've got to understand!"
And in one such place her horse stumbled, and she pulled in and bent low over her saddle, and said, as if he had really spoken:
"I can't understand——"
Her outline was blurred, but her face was like a light in that shadowed valley. He didn't speak until they were up the hill and the wind had caught them.
"What?" he asked then.
Was it the glow, offered by the white earth rather than the sky, that made him fancy her lips quivered?
"Why you always try to hurt me."
He thought of her broken riding crop, of her attempts to hurt him every time he had seen her since the day she had tried to cut him with it. A single exception clung to his memory—the night of Betty's dance, years ago, when she had failed to remember him. Her words, therefore, carried a thrill, a colour of surrender, since from the very first she had made him attack for his own defence.
"That's an odd thing for you to say."
There were lights ahead, accents in the closing night for Blodgett's huge and ugly extravagance. They rode slowly up the drive.
"Will you ever stop following me? Will you ever leave me alone?"
He stared at her, answering softly:
"It is impossible I should ever leave you alone."
At the terrace he sprang down, tossed his reins to a groom, and went to her, raising his hands. For a moment she looked at him, hesitating. There were two grooms. So she took his hands and leapt down. It was a quick, uncertain touch her fingers gave him.
"Thanks," she said, and crossed the terrace at his side.
That moment, he reflected, was in itself culminating, yet he couldn't dismiss the feeling that their relations approached a larger climax. All the better, since things couldn't very well go on as they were. Was it that fleeting contact that had altered him, or her companionship in the gray night? He only knew as he walked close to her that the bitterness in his heart had diminished. He was willing to relinquish the return blow if she would ease the hurt she had given him. He told himself that she had never been nearer. An odd fancy!
The others rode up as they reached the door, and the hall was noisy with people just returned from the pond, so that their solitude was destroyed. While he bathed and dressed he tried to understand just what had happened. The alteration in his own heart could only be accounted for by a change in hers. Perhaps his mood was determined by her unexpected wonder that he should always try to hurt. He couldn't drive from his mind the definite impression of her having come nearer.
"Winter sentiment!" he sneered, and hurried, for it was late.